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    1-T Buddies
             Students in 5-L have established a buddy relationship with the first grade students in Ms. Trani's class.  Our buddy program provides children with stimulating opportunities for learning and skill development and it enhances children`s cooperative learning behaviors such as taking turns, listening, sharing knowledge, praising others' efforts, helping one another, and completing a task. Throughout the year students will be involved in several units of study that will allow both groups of children to learn and grow together. 
     
     Reader's Theater with our Buddies
    RT    RT2     RT5 RT$ RT3

          Through Readers' Theater activities, 5-L and 1-T students began working together on the shared goal of developing oral reading fluency. No memorizing, no props, no costumes, no sets. With its emphasis on oral expression, Reader’s Theater is “theater of the imagination.”  Its strategy blends young children's natural desire to perform with their need for reading practice that is an important factor in building fluency, expression,comprehension, and listening skills. Most of all the students love it!

          During our shared buddy time with our fourth-grade buddies, small groups of students came together with teacher guidance to share a text that was modeled for fluency and expression. Later, the group read the text in separate parts and students began practicing while looking for ways to be expressive with language. Readers' Theater offer students an opportunity to look deeply at text in a way that they would otherwise have not and sharing the experience with our fourth grade buddies made it that much more fun!
     
     
     
    Buddy Groups Interviewing Each Another
     
     
     
     Creative Writing Teams
       Our first "buddy unit" began with a study of wordless stories.  Important goals of the unit include students studying deeply the illustrations of a book without words and a using their imagination to create their own stories.  Through wordless book study students at both levels are provided with learning opportunities, from  strengthening their understanding of story elements to honing their creative writing skills.
     
     Team      Team 2            Team 3       Team 4     Team 5      Team 6
     
    5-L and 1-T Buddies Share Their Original Stories
          Practicing    Practice    Practiced   Share   Shared   Sharing   Share   Share